Slip Op. 07 - 71 

 UNITED STATES COURT OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, : 

 Plaintiff, : 

v. : Court No. 06-00009

JACKPINE FOREST PRODUCTS LTD., : 

 Defendant. : 

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Memorandum & Order

[Motion to admit foreign attorney 

 on behalf of the defendant denied.] 

 Dated: May 11, 2007 

Peter D. Keisler, Assistant Attorney General; Jeanne E. 

Davidson, Director, Patricia M. McCarthy, Assistant Director, 

Commercial Litigation Branch, Civil Division, U.S. Department of 

Justice (Gregg M. Schwind), for the plaintiff. 

Grunfeld, Desiderio, Lebowitz, Silverman & Klestadt LLP (Ned 

H. Marshak and Joseph M. Spraragen) for the defendant. 

AQUILINO, Senior Judge: Experienced members of the Bar 

of this Court of International Trade have duly filed a notice of 

appearance and an answer on behalf of the defendant, which admits 

that it is a Canadian corporation with offices in British Columbia 

but denies that it entered, or caused to be entered, into the 

United States softwood lumber by means of material and false acts, 
Court No. 06-00009 Page 2 

statements and/or omissions in violation of 19 U.S.C. §§ 1401a, 

1481, 1484, 1485, and 1592, as alleged in the complaint filed 

herein by the U.S. government. 

Come now those Bar members with an application styled as 

Consent Motion to Admit Palbinder K. Shergill “for the limited 

purpose of participating as counsel to defendant in the instant 

action”: 

Palbinder K. Shergill is a highly qualified Canadian 

lawyer. Ms. Shergill was called to the bar of British 

Columbia in 1991 and regularly appears before the trial 

and appellate courts of that province as well as before 

the Federal Courts of Canada. Defendant is a longstanding client of Ms. Shergill’s and wishes to avail 

itself of her counsel in preparing its defense in this 

action. 

The motion is made pursuant to USCIT Rule 74(c), which governs the 

admission of foreign attorneys, in part, as follows: 

An attorney, barrister, or advocate who is qualified 

to practice at the bar of the court of any foreign state 

which extends a like privilege to members of the bar of 

this court may be specially admitted for purposes limited 

to a particular action. . . . In the case of such an 

applicant, the oath shall not be required and there shall 

be no fee. Such admission shall be granted only on 

motion of a member of the bar of this court. 

On its face, the linchpin of this provision is 

reciprocity. The sum and substance of defendant’s instant motion 

is that 
Court No. 06-00009 Page 3 

British Columbia meets the standard of a foreign state 

which “extends a like privilege to members of the bar of 

this court.” Foreign attorneys, such as those who are 

members of the bar of this Court, may apply to the Law 

Society of British Columbia to act as “practitioners of 

foreign law.” 

But it offers no support for this representation, perhaps due to 

the reported consent of plaintiff’s counsel. Such acquiescence, 

however, does not make requested relief automatically lawful1

. 

Hence, the undersigned has been required to consult Foreign Legal 

Consultants in Canada, a publication of the Federation of Law 

Societies of Canada (April 2000), page 7 of which sets forth 

restrictions and limitations on any foreign lawyer in British 

Columbia or other Canadian jurisdiction. Moreover, the website of 

the Law Society of British Columbia, itself, states, among other 

things, that “a practitioner of foreign law is not permitted to 

appear as counsel on behalf of a client before any British Columbia 

or federal court or administrative tribunal”. http://www.law 

society.bc.ca/licensing_membership/practitioners_ foreign_law.html. 

 1

 The court notes in passing, for example, that, while certain 

U.S. legislation, e.g., the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 

1976, Pub. L. No. 94-583, §1603(a), 90 Stat. 2891, 2892, defines 

“foreign state” to include an agency or instrumentality of that 

state, the Customs Courts Act of 1980 does not do so, thereby 

leaving that term in USCIT Rule 74(c) to traditional 

interpretation, namely, a political entity that has been formally 

recognized by the U.S. government as an independent foreign 

sovereign. Cf. JP Morgan Chase Bank v. Traffic Stream (BVI) 

Infrastructure Ltd., 536 U.S. 88 (2002); Wright, Miller & Cooper, 

Federal Practice & Procedure §3604, p. 391 (1984). 
Court No. 06-00009 Page 4 

If this actually means what it seems to say, then the 

reciprocity contemplated by USCIT Rule 74(c), supra, does not 

exist, and defendant’s motion to admit Palbinder K. Shergill as its 

counsel must be, and hereby is, denied.2

 So ordered. 

Dated: New York, New York 

 May 11, 2007 

/s/ Thomas J. Aquilino, Jr. ___

 Senior Judge 

 2

 If the court’s perception of Canada’s approach is off the 

mark, the defendant may have until May 18, 2007 to provide proof to 

that effect.